Jul 13, 2014, 02:25 pm
Last edited Jul 13, 2014, 02:25 pm
update #1
I have had PM messages regarding clinical research and thought I would share my answer because it is something I am often asked. The question was essentially what qualification do you need to be able to do a research job. Another part of the question also lead to me explain where nurses can also go within research outside of the usual hospital/clinic setting.
I'll preface by saying the type of research I'm involved in are sponsored clinical trials (eg. by a pharma company or a disease foundation) and investigator initiated trials (research thought up and headed, usually, by a medical doctor).
In NSW there is no specific qualification you MUST have to be in clinical research, however it may be dictated by the actual area the research is being done. Eg. If you are doing research in ICU, then usually you would need to be an RN as EN's are not in ICU.
You don't necessarily need to have experience in the particular area you are going to be doing research in, although it can help. It depends on the requirements of the position. For example my area is ophthalmology and our basic requirement is that you've had some hospital or clinic experience and must be an RN (this is because the hospital we are attached to needs an RN when they assist the doctors in some of the eye injections, also they inject IV fluorescein dye during the retinal angiogram, so again it needs to be an RN according to our local requirements). You also MUST have a good command of IT/computer literacy otherwise the job will be a big struggle due to the data/admin load.
You might be interested to know that many companies (pharmaceutical and secondary organisations called contract research organisations, CRO's, who oversee research) offer "Clinical Research Associate" (CRA) jobs.
These CRA's come to each research site and check (monitor) all the data and how the research is done. People who can do this type of job are nurses, doctors, ppl with life sciences degrees, allied health, pharmacists. So this is also an option. It tends to involve quite bit of travel around Australia and sometimes to New Zealand or occasionally other countries. Depending on which trials they "monitor" and the requirement per trial.
To get a CRA job, you usually have to start as a Clinical Research Assistant and then progress to a CRA. Often in the same company, but not always. If you have already been a research nurse, sometimes you can go straight into a CRA job.
Hope this information is interesting! People involved in nursing research specifically might want to add their own views.
